


Engagement Sequence

by Kalopsia



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Also Normal Chronology, Assassin AU, M/M, Reverse Chronology, it's a study of the squip's control over jeremy, jeremy and michael are both assassins and can't stop finding each other, there's Oprah levels of angst here, you get some angst! you get some angst! you get some angst!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 06:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11708487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalopsia/pseuds/Kalopsia
Summary: “You shot my fucking client,” Michael growls. The phone, on speaker a few inches away, practically rattles with Michael’s vaguely concealed anger.“No,” Jeremy says, his voice calm as he carefully folds his one good suit and places it into his bag. He has no idea who he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. “I shot my fucking mark.”There’s silence on the other end, and for a moment Jeremy thinks he’s hung up. But then he speaks again. “I’m going to shootyou.”“Find me first,” Jeremy challenges, because this is who the Squip has made him, this is who he is, and clicks the red button to end the call.-Jeremy and Michael are both assassins. They're not looking, but they find each other anyway.





	Engagement Sequence

**Author's Note:**

> heyo! i have approximately ten million WIPs i could have worked on/added chapters to, (including my spiderman!jeremy au and this dogsitting/cat person!jeremy oneshot i'm writing) and but this is the one that happened! i wanted to explore a new take on the different aspects of the squip's control over jeremy, and i figured what better way to do that than an assassins au? 
> 
> just some housekeeping things: the right alignment is reverse chronology, and the left alignment is present day. 
> 
> (i love metaphors as much as christine loves play rehearsal. enjoy!)

He’s been doing this so long he doesn’t think he can stop.

**-o-**

The Las Vegas air is hot and humid, the lights of the towering buildings flickering around him in bright blues and reds. They bathe the neighboring rooftop in brilliant hues while Jeremy stands calmly a hundred feet away. He cocks his gun and flicks off the safety, just like he always does.

It is edging near three in the morning with no moon to show for it, but the missing sun had done little to cool down the area. The concrete under his feet still burns with that day’s heat; Jeremy burns with anticipation.

The blue of her dress is vibrant against her pale skin, and he can see the sharp pull of her collarbone even from this distance. Her hair is perfect, wrapped in a tight bun with a lone yellow curl falling just over her temple. This is where Jeremy aims, and Jeremy never misses.

His finger wraps around the trigger and he shoots. She crumples.

Jeremy is gone before she hits the ground.

**-o-**

“You shot my fucking client,” Michael growls into a phone not four hours later. The sun is just beginning to peek through the Vegas smog, and Jeremy is packing his things. The phone, on speaker a few inches away, practically rattles with Michael’s vaguely concealed anger.

“No,” Jeremy says, his voice calm as he carefully folds his one good suit and places it into his bag. He has no idea who he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter. “I shot my fucking mark.”

There’s silence on the other end, and for a moment Jeremy thinks he’s hung up. But then he speaks again. “I’m going to shoot  _you.”_

“Find me first,” Jeremy challenges, because this is who the Squip has made him, this is who he is, and clicks the red button to end the call.

**-o-**

The sun is setting in Newark, and Jeremy catches a flash of brown eyes glinting in the sunlight, frozen amidst the crowd of people, and he  _knows._ He lets himself disappear into the crowd. It’s easy. It always is.

Michael meets him in a cafe an hour later. He does not look fazed.

“I didn’t get paid, because my client  _died_ ,” he says by way of introduction as they’re waiting in line. “It was a ninety thousand dollar job. What the fuck, Jeremy.”

“That sucks,” Jeremy replies, then orders his coffee. He steps to the pick-up counter, lets Michael do the same.

He doesn’t speak again until Michael steps very close to him, closer than he needs to be to kill him. Instead of moving away, he asks, “How’d you get my number?”

Michael ignores this.

“I know your mark,” he explains in his ear as Jeremy waits for his coffee. Jeremy does not acknowledge the shudder that traces his spine. “And I know my client has  _your_ client in a compromising position. Stay away, and we’re both good. Do we have a deal?”

“I’ll pass,” Jeremy replies calmly, accepting his coffee as he slides a bill for the both of them across the counter. He’s walking out before the barista can give him his change, before Michael can come after him with any more empty threats.

**-o-**

 

He doesn’t like to think about  _before_.

The day-to-day had ruined everything he’d known. The memories from then are a mess of slogging through school, getting through life, doing homework and going to bed. The gray winter days blended together, cold and snowy and wet. It wasn’t even sadness that struck him. Just a weird sort of empty that couldn’t be filled, no matter what he tried.

He thinks it got to his mom, too. She left them halfway through Jeremy’s junior year. No note. No number. No nothing.

It hit his dad before Jeremy even had time to process what her leaving even meant. All he knew was the day after, when he and his dad were standing in the kitchen, wondering what to do about dinner. Neither of them knew how to cook. Neither of them dared to order food. So they went to bed.

The next morning, his dad didn’t leave his room.

Jeremy kept drudging through his days. He didn’t know what else to do. Didn’t know how to cope with a dad who no longer put on pants. Didn’t have anybody to talk to. Didn’t have anything to distract him from the emptiness.

And then he found the Squip. 

  
**-o-**

 

They meet again a few days later, at a bar. They’re still in Newark. Jeremy is drinking a whiskey and starting to think about his newest assignment when Michael takes a seat next to him.

Michael orders a martini and waits. He doesn’t say anything until the bartender slides him the drink, and even then it’s a few languid sips before he turns to Jeremy. “Change your mind?”

Jeremy finds Michael to be like the Vegas sun: always bearing down on him whether he wants him to or not. He’s heard the whispers about Michael, of course he has, they all say the kid never turns down a client and he never misses. From the focused confidence and dormant power clear under Michael’s skin, Jeremy doesn’t find it hard to believe them.

But up close, with the dim lights of the bar reflecting in his dark eyes, with the settled but wearied way he sits in his own skin, it is clear that Michael does not need to be believed in.

“No,” Jeremy takes another sip from his whiskey. He doesn’t break Michael’s steely eye contact. “Did you?”

Michael watches him drink, and Jeremy feels his eyes on his throat as the liquid burns down. “Kill mine, and I’ll kill you. Last chance.”

“I’ll pass,” Jeremy tells him again. Michael licks his lips, and Jeremy tries not to stare too much.

He’s learned the hard way that emotions only make things worse, so the next morning he loads his gun and shoots the mark in the head from across the street. He does not think about Michael’s threat, murmured warm against his ear in that coffee shop, or the way he’d focused more on the feeling of his lips than the sound of his words.

He doesn’t have a choice in who he kills. He just does what he’s told, and he doesn’t get hurt.

It’s better that way.

**-o-**

 

“I hear Newark was… interesting,” the Squip says the next time Jeremy sees him. “I don’t like complications. Anything I need to know?”

Newark was four months ago.

“His client was my mark,” Jeremy tells him. “He confronted me about it. Nothing major happened.”

“This one seems to be quite the buzz,” the Squip notes. “But you already know what happens to noisy assassins, I hope?”

Jeremy doesn’t even blink. “I have it under control.”

“Good.” The Squip hands him a briefcase. In it, Jeremy knows, is his payment from his last job as well as a new assignment. “You know what needs to happen. Get to it.”

**-o-**

 

He wanted to be more than what he was.

His mother’s disappearance left him aching for something extraordinary. Desperate to fill the empty that was only growing at the idea of his future prospects. Needing something to pull him away from the suffocation of the day-to-day that had ruined his parents, that would ruin him too, unless something brought him back.

Rich had given him a name.

The Squip had given him a gun, made him a promise, told him that killing would make him feel alive.

He convinced him it was exactly what he wanted, and trained away the doubt. 

**-o-**

 

Michael doesn’t kill him when they meet again in Peru.

He doesn’t kill him in Monterrey. In Tehran. In Boston. In Beirut.

Months pass. Assignments are completed. Money is made. The Squip checks in. Autumn freezes into Winter melts into Spring.

Michael becomes a habit that Jeremy carves into his muscle memory and isn’t able to break. He tries to break Michael instead, but can’t seem to bring himself to. Jeremy wonders what they’d be like if the Squip didn’t control his every move. Wonders if they’d have been friends.

It’s always a drink or a cigarette or a coffee. A vague promise to fulfill his threat. A breath ghosting against his ear, an empty smile facing the sun. He counts his eyelashes in Lisbon and learns his freckles in Kyoto. Michael keeps finding him, and Jeremy slowly stops hiding.

It’s wrong. He knows it’s wrong. He’s not allowed to have attachments. The Squip has detailed the dangers of this exact scenario countless times, has told him that in order to escape the  _sameness_ he needs to be the  _best._ He can’t be the best if he does this. Assassins with attachments get killed, or they get caught, and neither are conducive to their goals.

But although Michael looks the same in every corner of the world, Jeremy doesn’t feel the unending  _sameness_ that drags him through his other days. It’s a welcome relief, throwing dismissive acknowledgements at Michael’s empty threats. He doesn’t feel bland. Being with Michael is like the rush of a job well-done, a high that pulls him away from normal and lets him believe things aren’t going to be the  _same._

He should run. He should be what the Squip has made him, should shed identities like snakeskin and fall back into the game the same way he has done countless times before. This is who the Squip has made him. This is who he is.

Instead, he lets himself be found.

**-o-**

In June, he kisses Michael in Kiev.

**-o-**

 

He meets up with Rich in Hoboken. It’s a week before July 4th, and Jeremy’s rarely in America for the holiday, so he stays long enough for the party.

It’s a loud affair. More beer than Jeremy’s seen since the time he was in Germany for Oktoberfest. There are so many people, so Jeremy does what he does best: He disappears into the crowd.

He accepts a drink. He dances to the music. He hides among them and takes comfort in the fact that none of them know who he has become. He’s a college student, a cashier, a teacher, anybody he wants to be, anybody he could have been if he hadn’t found the Squip. It’s so easy to move among them. Everybody was already running from something. Jeremy didn’t even need to pretend.

He chats with a girl named Christine, who knows Rich from college. Jeremy likes her instantly, because she does most of the talking without most of the prompting.

She tells him eagerly about her job as a theatre teacher, how she gets paid to help kids learn to love the arts. She has a guinea pig and a roommate named Jenna. She lives over the river in Midtown, but commutes to New Jersey for work.

She talks about this place in Brooklyn with really great avocado toast. She talks about her parents and the Tony awards. She talks about her high school and meeting Rich and feminism.

She doesn’t ask questions about Jeremy’s life, but she smiles at him as if she knows he couldn’t answer even if she did.

**-o-**

The Squip’s employment contract.

The heady rush of his first kill.

His resurrection. 

**-o-**

 

When Michael corners him in Cairo, Jeremy’s expecting him to finally follow through with his threat from Newark. It’s been long enough, he figures. Almost a year.

Instead, Michael kisses him hard in a hotel room against a glass wall that gives way to the real world. The pyramids are a striking presence just outside the window, but Michael’s mouth on his neck captures every last bit of Jeremy’s attention. He’s not surprised, but his body is, jumping to life the second Michael’s tongue found its way into Jeremy’s mouth. Pitifully enough, it’s the first time he’s been with  _anybody_ since he found the Squip. It breaks something inside him, something he hadn’t known had formed until Michael started dismantling it.

But then Michael is sucking a bruise onto Jeremy’s collarbone, and he is embarrassingly hard just from kissing and all he wants to do is have Michael suck his  _stupid fucking dick or get the fuck out-_

and then Michael is sliding down, pressing his mouth to his stomach, his hips, and he stops, laughs, and says, “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

“I swear to  _God,_ Michael _-”_

and then Michael’s lips are on him, sucking and licking, adding a hand where his mouth doesn’t quite reach, and Jeremy’s hands are in his hair, gripping and pushing him down for  _more, more, more-_

and then he’s realizing how  _stupid_ he’s being, because you can’t be an  _assassin_ with  _attachments_ and the Squip had drilled that into his head until he had nothing else to believe, had spent so much time crafting every bit of Jeremy’s defense

except everything the Squip has made him is crashing down the second Michael hums around him-

and then Jeremy is coming apart under Michael’s deft movements and he’s mumbling sweet nothings in between rapid apologies but when Michael pushes him into bed and shuts him up with a kiss-

and then something ugly settles in Jeremy’s chest, hard and rough, and it hurts, it _hurts-_

it  _hurts-_

**-o-**

 

In the hours between night and dawn, Jeremy blinks awake to see Michael staring at him.

“What’s your last name?” he asks, his voice so quiet it could almost be a dream.

But it isn’t, and Jeremy blinks Michael into focus because he knows in a  _dream,_ Michael wouldn’t ask that- in a  _dream,_ he wouldn’t have to.

In reality, he’s an assassin with a life that doesn’t belong to him anymore.

“I don’t know,” Jeremy lies, and Michael falls onto his back.

Jeremy stares at his profile, the way the stubble fades into smooth brown skin and rises into his Adam’s apple, and falls into the steady movement of his chest, the  _impossible_ up and down of his abdomen that lets him know that this is real, and Michael is still alive even though he should never have made it past Newark, should never have been  _allowed_ to make it past Newark.

He needs to take care of this. Can’t let emotions get in the way of what the Squip needs him to do, and it’s only a matter of time before that happens. But he’s not there yet, so he lifts his head and places it on Michael’s stomach, and falls asleep to the steady breath of the single person he never should have gotten to hear it from.

When he wakes up, to no surprise, Michael is gone. There is a note on the mirror that says in messy scrawl:

_Maybe next time I’ll let you return the favor._

**-o-**

 

The Squip shows up at his door in Amsterdam holding a briefcase. It is no different from the countless ones that came before it.

“I have another job for you,” he says, and Jeremy knows his time is up. “Remember what I taught you about those who make themselves heard?”

He thinks about the threat of broken thumbs and black eyes if he were ever to forget.

Jeremy takes the briefcase, lets the Squip inside. “Tell me what I need to do.” 

**-o-**

 

Instead of finishing his assignment, there’s Dublin, slick and rainy, filled with lazy kisses in a cold hotel room. There is no fireplace, but Michael’s skin, red-hot, does more than enough to warm Jeremy’s numbing fingers. The night is constant, plagued only by the equally dark gray skies. Always cold, always wet.

Michael fucks him slowly, and Jeremy comes with his name ghosting across his lips, a plea, a promise neither of them can keep.

In the morning, before the darkness has given way to yet another day of deepend gray, Michael rolls over and presses his lips to Jeremy’s neck, mouthing a question that Jeremy cannot answer. He answers by kissing him back and running his hands through Michael’s hair. Outside, the rain tries to baptize them clean.

Michael doesn’t leave in the morning, stays until Jeremy takes his shower, letting the furiously hot water scald the memories of the night before away. He has a job. He washes his hair. The Squip has told him what he needs to do so. He was not given a choice. Soaps his arms. Rinses. He has to do it.

When he gets out, towel dried but hair still dripping, Michael is gone, and this time there is no note to prove he had ever been there.

Jeremy sits on Michael’s side of the bed and rests his head in his hands. He knew what the Squip was giving him, had accepted it anyway and let him settle in his spine and lock in his brain. He knows it is a gift he cannot return.

Until now, he hasn’t wanted to.

**-o-**

 

The Squip taught him everything he needed to know. He drew away Jeremy’s fear and replaced it with guarantees that kept the day-to-day at bay.

He rides the high and does not look down. 

**-o-**

 

“Who-” Jeremy gasps in Berlin, as Michael licks his way up his neck. “Who do you work for?”

Michael bites a mark on his shoulder. “Does it matter?”

 _“Please,”_ Jeremy begs, pulling him up and forcing him into a bruising kiss. He doesn’t know what to tell Michael, because he can’t tell him the truth. “So I know not to- So I can-”

Michael rolls his hips against him. Jeremy cuts himself off with a groan and lets Michael kiss him quiet.

Michael breathes a name into Jeremy’s ear, and continues leaving a trail of purple bruises down his chest.

**-o-**

 

He can’t do it.

**-o-**

 

When Jeremy opens his eyes, Michael is already awake, already dressed and sipping a coffee at the desk.

“Morning,” he says cheerily. “There’s continental breakfast downstairs until seven, if that interests you.”

“Michael.” Jeremy sits up. He tries, “We can’t. We  _can’t._ ”

This is who the Squip has made him. This is who he is.  

Michael stares at him. Narrows his eyes, as if reading him. Jeremy stares back, broken and tired and  _he doesn’t want to do this anymore._ He doesn’t know what’s written on his own face, but Michael seems to find what he’s looking for.

He puts his coffee down. He takes his things. And he leaves.

**-o-**

A month later, Jeremy kills Michael’s employer with a bullet between the eyes.

It’s not exactly what the Squip had wanted, but it’s the best Jeremy can do.

**-o-**

He will never know anything as well as he comes to know the barrel of a gun.

**-o-**

 

He finds Michael in Singapore, with blood dripping over his shoes and a gun held against his heart. He didn’t know he’d been searching until he sees him, standing ten feet away. He is wearing only jeans that could have fit him once but now hang too loose around his hips and holding a gun that is too cheap for the money he is getting paid.

He’s grown older since the first time they met, the wrinkles in his forehead and red staining the whites of his eyes making this much too easy to read. But he does not look upset, either, by the lifestyle he has chosen. Instead, Jeremy can read anger, maybe. Adrenaline and exhaustion, too. But not sadness.

“You’re too young for this,” Jeremy says, but doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t even know how old Michael is. It doesn’t matter. If anything, Jeremy’s too old. He has seen too many bodies fall, too much blood shed by his own hand for this to be anyone’s fault but his own. He looks at his own shoes, glinting in the sunlight, and says, “You shouldn’t be doing this.”

Michael narrows his eyes, and maybe he can see something else hidden in the swath of emotion. Sympathy? Pity? Jeremy doesn’t know. He isn’t sure if he wants to.

He hears, rather than feels, the bullet tear through his skin, and knows this is revenge for Berlin.

He sees the rooftop fall away, and the blackness of Michael’s hair and the clear brown of his face standing over him replaces the starless sky of Singapore.

“You,” he says, voice cold and calm. “don’t know a goddamn thing about _what_ or  _who_  I should be doing.”

And then Michael is walking away, and Jeremy is left bleeding in the empty lot, and he isn’t sure he’ll ever cross paths with the black-haired assassin again.

The ugly thing born in Cairo hardens deep in his chest.

He still wants. God save him, he still wants.

**-o-**

 

He needn’t have worried.

The next time he sees Michael, it is on a live camera feed from a conference room in Los Angeles. The Squip is standing across from him, his arms crossed. He can see the barest outline of a tattoo slipping out from underneath his collar, a clean blue pattern that reminds Jeremy of circuitry on a motherboard.

“You let him go,” the Squip says, eyes narrowed. “You let him live. You failed your assignment.”

“I killed his handler instead,” Jeremy replies. He learned a long time ago that lying and arguing just made everything worse.

“Why?” the Squip’s voice is strained and quiet, and it’s easy to tell that one wrong word could set him off.

Jeremy doesn’t answer that question. What he says instead is not quite a lie, but it’s not too far from one. “I screwed up. It won’t happen again.”

The Squip is deadly quiet. “It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

“I know.”

Squip rubs his temples. “You let him go in New York. You let him go in Beijing.”

“I know,” Jeremy says again.

“You let him  _shoot you_ in Singapore.” The Squip takes a sip of water, stands up and walks over to him. “You have to be the best. I cannot afford anything but the best.”

“I know.”

“This isn’t about you anymore, Jeremy. This is about something bigger than you. This is about  _business,_ and if I can’t run a goddamned business without one of my employees ‘ _screwing up’,_ then I won’t employ them anymore. You were an investment. I made you. I want my return.”

Jeremy clenches his jaw as the Squip comes to stand behind him. Stares at his reflection in the glass. Empty eyes stare back, and he does not speak. This is who the Squip has made him. This is who he is.

The Squip grabs a fistful of Jeremy’s hair and pulls. Jeremy’s head is yanked down, and his face is turned to face the Squip.

“ _Look. At. Me._ Jeremy.” The last word comes out dangerously low and iced over. Jeremy’s neck hurts from the angle but he slowly moves his eyes to meet his gaze. Squip takes a breath. “Don’t you want this?”

“I need this,” he says quietly, his voice the closest thing to a plea he’d ever let it be.

Squip holds up a hand, lets him go. Jeremy falls back to his seat and does not say a word. The Squip walks back over to his own seat. “Fine. One more chance. But this time, two marks for the price of one. Do not-” he sneers. “‘ _Screw up’_ \- again.”

Jeremy breaks eye contact with his reflection. Looks up. The Squip has his hands folded together on the table, and looks every bit like the man he no longer is. Jeremy blinks. It’s an exhausted acknowledgement. The Squip knows this.

“Kill the Valentine heir,” he says. “And then kill this pitiful kid.”

“He’s not-” Jeremy speaks before he can stop himself. Lamely, he finishes, “A kid. He’s not a kid.”

There’s silence. The ugly thing in his chest winds so tight Jeremy is surprised it doesn’t shatter under the pressure.

“Oh.” Squip looks at him, leans back in his chair.  “ _That’s_  how it is.”

Something cracks deeper inside of him at his tone. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”

“Jeremy,” the Squip says. “You have a choice to make. It is the same one I gave you when you tried to leave. Do you remember? Do you want that again?”

“Yes,” he says. He remembers the world as it slipped through his fingers. Remembers the glass against his skin as he walked through it. Remembers the fear that rewrote who he was.

Jeremy remembers. He does not want that again.

The Squip gestures to the screen. Michael is walking through the aisles of a convenience store, oblivious.

“You’re a capable assassin, Jeremy. But you will never be the  _best_  unless you upgrade. Get rid of your attachment to Michael. He isn’t worth your time. I cannot give you what you want unless you do as I say. We both have ends of a deal to keep up.”

Jeremy’s breath comes in heavy bursts through his nose, he stares through his hair at the ground. His other hand is clenched into a fist in his lap. “I know what I’m doing.”

“I know you do. I taught you everything you know.” The Squip reminds him. Jeremy does not want to be reminded. “Go kill him. Her, too. Tonight. New York. The Middleborough Hotel. Take it or leave it.” He places a gun in front of him, slides it to Jeremy across the table with a smile. “You already know what happens to those who try and leave.”

Jeremy shatters.

He takes the gun.

**-o-**

Death followed his fingertips, and Jeremy had never felt more alive. 

**-o-**

 

Whatever it was that fractured inside of him bleeds through to New York.

The lights and smog and noise stuff the cracks but do not heal them. He checks into the hotel with an easy smile and a name that is not his own. Distracts prying eyes from his splintering pieces by sliding another credit card across the table. Keeps his head down to stay security camera-shy. Says only enough to be forgotten, not enough to be remembered.

Upstairs, Jeremy’s hotel room reminds him of the one in Zagreb, the one in Helsinki, the one in Toulouse. There are white couches and modern art pieces with captions in a language Jeremy can only understand bits and pieces of. There is a marble counter and a chandelier. He sets down his suitcase and does not unpack. He’ll be gone before the night is over, anyway. He always is.

He sits on the bed. He wonders, loud enough to mask the ringing in his ears, which gun he should use. He cannot see the sky through the window. Only concrete. Only steel and glass.

The cracked thing in him breaks a little more.

It’s loud outside on the balcony, New York always is, but it’s nothing compared to the rush that consumes him when he catches sight of his first mark.

It’s the first time he’s seen him since he got shot.

Michael is standing outside of the hotel across the street, two dozen balconies to his left, and hasn’t seen Jeremy yet. He’s leaning over the edge of his own hotel balcony with a drink in his hand, the glass is glittering in the the city lights. His eyes are focused on Jeremy’s building, but ten floors down.

He's looking at the ballroom. Where the Dillinger-Valentine gala was just getting started. Where Jeremy will be headed after he kills- after he eliminates the problem at hand.

His heart aches, in such sudden and blinding fury that it brings tears to his eyes. He sinks to his knees anyway, focuses on loading his gun and breathes in deeply, ignoring the twinge in his still-healing abdomen. Focuses on how Michael shot him first. Ignores how he had deserved it.

He wishes it wasn’t  _him_ , he wishes it were anybody else in the entire world. Then, he’d be able to put a bullet in his skull and finish his fucking  _job_ without a second thought.

 _This is your job,_ he thinks, and rises to his knees.

 _This is your job,_ he thinks, and rests his gun on the balcony of the hotel room.

“This is your goddamned  _job,”_ He whispers to himself, and looks through the eyepiece.

He lets the red dot rest on Michael’s belly, right below his ribs. He remembers mouthing down the soft skin, weeks ago, months ago, and has to look away.

When he looks up, Michael is staring straight at him.

Jeremy almost doesn’t do it.

He sees the boy he met almost two years ago. He sees him grinning sweet and easy in Paris. Sees him on his back on a bed in Zurich. He sees Michael in a bar in Newark, and Jeremy’s own finger pauses, and he thinks  _stupid stupid stupid,_ because Michael could move, could take out his own gun, could shoot him again and this time not let him get away.

But he doesn’t move away. He just keeps staring at Jeremy as if it’s enough to make him stop.

It almost is.

Jeremy pulls the trigger.

Michael goes down with a thud that Jeremy feels in his heartbeat, but he isn’t watching his fellow assassin anymore. His eyes are glued to Michael’s martini glass, which falls, falls, falls down to the bustling street below.

The cracked thing inside of him shatters alongside the glass.

He goes back inside.

**-o-**

He is become God. 

**-o-**

 

His tie, a dark blue silk bow-tie that matches the color of his suit, feels too tight around his neck. He has to force six deep breaths before he is able to tie it completely. The Squip always said a man in blue could be trusted, and Jeremy wonders how far the human psyche would take his innocence in court.

He doesn’t inform the Squip of the shot. It would be a bread crumb that would turn into a trail that would turn into an arrest that would turn into a lifetime in prison that would turn into the death penalty. Jeremy’s too good for the death penalty. He uses the icy irony to soothe the crushing wave that came when the ugly thing had shattered inside of him.

He goes to pour himself a drink, and it is only after he drops the whiskey glass does he realize how much his hands are shaking. His eyes close, and he thinks of Michael, bleeding on the balcony. He thinks of how nobody will think to look for him, how room service wouldn’t think clean the deck.

He’s drowning, the shattered thing inside him has busted open and is crashing like an ocean that intends to drown him. He can’t breathe. The world is rolling. He retches, but nothing comes up. He feels nothing. He feels everything. God, he feels everything.

Waves of dizziness crash over his mind, heart racing in a way it hasn’t since his first mark. He leans against the sink, grips the cool marble of the countertop so hard his knuckles go white. His head falls back, and he thinks of Michael on his knees in front of him, and  _God,_ he can’t fucking  _breathe-_

He takes in a haggard breath and forces himself to take a long drink from the bottle. The burn conquers the wave, and it recedes, leaving a multitude of memories behind it like disturbed sand. He thinks back to his dad, wonders if he’d ever managed to put on pants. Wonders if his mom ever came back. Thinks about Christine at Rich’s party. He thinks about what Michael’s family would do with the news of his death.

He leaves the hotel room.

He relaxes into the old habit of gluing a porcelain expression back on his face as he takes long strides to the elevator. There is a Arcus 94 pistol in his suit chest pocket and a knife hidden in the sole of his shoe. Once the doors slide shut, he counts the floors to the ballroom. Ten. He already knew this, but the counting gives him something to do other than focus on the way his insides are being shredded by the shattered bits of glass in his chest, sharp and ragged against his heart.

He stops in the bathroom before entering the main room. He looks in the mirror and lets his head fall at what he sees. He is tired. He is so, so, tired, and nothing shows this more clearly than the bags under his eyes, the limpness of his hair, the scattering of zits on his chin. 

He forces a long breath of air into his lungs and holds it for a second, letting the image of a puffed out chest and held-high head sink into his mind. This is who he once was, this is who he could have been. This is who the Squip had killed.

He lets the breath out and he watches himself deflate. His shoulders sink into themselves and his chin nearly touches to his chest. He flips the tap on, and cools his heating cheeks with water. Tries not to think of Michael trying to apply pressure to his stomach, of Michael in too much pain to move. Tries not to wonder if it was the first time he’d been shot.

The shattered pieces of the ugly thing dig deeper inside of him, lacerations that he knows will never heal. He doesn’t know what to do with the fact that it probably wasn’t.

He pulls the Arcus out of his jacket and slides it up his sleeve, straightening his bow-tie before finally leaving the bathroom. The dimness of the ballroom requires him to take moment to allow his eyes to adjust, and there she is.

She is swathed in green, her tanned skin glowing in the dark yellow light from the massive chandeliers. Her eyes are bright and clear, her eyeshadow clouds the amber of her eyes in gold, her cheeks are shadowed in the curve of her eyelashes, and Jeremy can practically  _feel_ the lively pulse under her skin.

He makes his way to her, careful not to catch the eye of anybody who could possibly be thought of as a witness. He appears in front of her, and her eyes crinkle in unadulterated joy when he offers his hand in a dance. When she nods, he smiles back at her, ever gracious, and pulls her into a waltz.

They twist and whirl in every which way and Jeremy latches onto details to keep his head from spinning: the way her skin sparkles with whatever makeup she had applied hours earlier, the flush that paints her skin and disappears under her dress, the rich smell of her perfume. He introduces himself as the son of an executive at a nonexistent publishing company. She smiles and introduces herself in return,  _Chloe Valentine,_ the heir of the Valentine fortune. Her money has been spent on her posture, her legacy, her sparkling engagement ring.

Her husband is Jake Dillinger. Jeremy wonders if Chloe knows her father-in-law wants her dead. Wonders if the money Mr. Dillinger inherits will be enough to make him happy, will be enough to soothe his son’s pain at her death.  

He tries to ignore Michael, but he’s somehow locked himself in Jeremy’s bones. He almost falters, but the Squip is in his brain.

Halfway through the orchestra’s next song _,_ he dips her and leans in. He asks a question, his lips brushing against the shell of her ear. He does not think of Newark.

“Would you like to step outside for a bit of fresh air?” He offers, a light smile in his tone. “My room has a lovely balcony.”

Her laugh is broken bells as she nods, and together they sneak out of the ballroom, slide down the hallway and up the elevator, and into Jeremy’s room. The whiskey glass is still shattered in the sink, his suitcase unpacked against the bed.

Jeremy leads her past the evidence of his breakdown, stands her in the same place he had held a gun just an hour earlier.

They’re alone on the balcony, and Jeremy leans over the edge of the barrier, eyes searching for the room Michael had been staying at. He counts two dozen rooms to the left and finds it easily enough, and tries to figure out the number. He can’t see Michael, but he knows he’s there, maybe dead, maybe unconscious on the floor, maybe leaning against the edge of the balcony as his breathing hitched and he bled out.

Chloe Valentine chats easily about her husband’s attempts to do  _everything_ except her, and how just  _once_ she’d like to be able to let her guard down without fear of reprimandation from her mother. Jeremy has his chance.

 _This is your goddamned job,_ he thinks, and his training brings him back to the ground. He turns away from the edge and steps closer to her, as if they were about to dance once again.

“Let your guard down?” He says, his voice little more than a breath. Her eyes are lidded as she nods, and Jeremy feels the iciness of the metal pistol against his arm as it slides into his palm.

He nuzzles the mouth of the gun right against her chest, and she lets out a little gasp, eyes falling open and down to the cool press of metal.

When she sees the gun, her mouth opens to scream, but Jeremy pulls the trigger before she can. The silencer and the buzz of New York City traffic keeps everything muffled, but Jeremy wouldn’t have heard it anyway. All he can think about is Michael, making the same expression as the one decaying on his mark’s face, Michael bleeding out in the same position, Michael, Michael, Michael.

Chloe Valentine falls to the ground, a Christmas sight of red blossoming against the green.

Jeremy slides the pistol back into his suit pocket and breathes in heavily once, before slipping back into his hotel room.

He doesn’t panic. He’s killed too many and too often to panic every time he completed a job. So he cleans. He wipes down the countertops and runs water over the shattered glass in the sink. He takes the whiskey bottle with his suitcase. He vacuums. He leaves.

It isn’t until he is safe across the street that he takes out the emergency, untraceable cell phone the Squip had given him in his briefcase, and makes his call.

_“911, what’s your emergency?”_

Jeremy stands to the side of the street and holds up a hand, waving over a taxi. “Yes, hi, I’d like to report an attempted homicide at the Middleborough Hotel? Room 1576. Check the balcony, I heard gunshots from outside.”

 **-o-**  

“I cannot help you anymore, Jeremy.”

_Delete._

“Hey, it’s Rich. I heard from the Squip what happened in New York, he’s fuckin’ pissed. I just wanted to say that I know what happened last time, and if you need help, then I got you. As much as I can. Anyway, I’m still in Hoboken if you wanna give me a call back. Just talk to me, alright bro? We’ll figure it out. Bye.”

_Delete._

“Jeremy! It’s Christine! We met at Rich’s party? Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to get coffee with me sometime soon? I don’t have to teach on Monday, so let me know if that’s something you might wanna do!”

_Delete._

“It’s me. We need to talk. I’ll be in Guayaquil in September.” There is a pause, a breath, and then, in a voice that sounds almost like a laugh, “Come and find me, Jeremy Heere.” 

 **-o-**  

Only once, did he try to give back what the Squip had given him.

In return, the Squip had sent his arsenal at Jeremy. He spent months on the other side of the gun, only alive because the Squip didn’t want to give Jeremy the satisfaction of killing him. He couldn’t escape the scrawled messages in his hideouts. The confiscated fake ID’s. The phone calls. The apparent-strangers dropping his name when they couldn’t possibly have known who he was.

Anybody could have been against him.

Everybody became a threat.

He lost reality. Sleep abandoned him. His heart warred against his ribs. Nights kept his gun in his palm, kept his body walking through the city streets. Days kept him waiting for the end.

Between the crosshairs became his home.

**-o-**

 

“How the fuck did you figure out my last name?”

“Oh, so it  _is_ Heere?” Michael says, hunched over with an arm wrapped protectively around his stomach, presumably where the gunshot wound is still healing. “Cool. I wouldn’t want for this to be  _awkward_ or anything.”

“What do you want, Michael?” Jeremy sighs. He takes a seat across the table, and stares his raven-haired opposition in the eye. He can’t tell if he’s looking back at him through the nearly opaque sunglasses, and it makes Jeremy more uncomfortable than he’s used to.

“First of all, I forgive you,” Michael shrugs, continuing as if he hadn’t heard him. “I shot you first. I know it’s only fair. I was waiting. I thought you’d’ve done it in Vegas. You  _should’ve_ done it in Vegas, it would’ve saved us a hell of a lot more trouble. Not to mention all the money on condoms.”

Michael sits back in his chair and rubs his hands across his face, his fingertips sliding underneath his shades. Jeremy can see the edge of a purple bruise against his brown skin and he wants to reach out, wants to curve his hand against his jaw and pull himself in and lean so he doesn’t have to keep himself standing. He almost does, and then he remembers who they are.

“I was supposed to kill you,” Jeremy says, but his voice is empty. Something in his chest flares at the memory of disgust written on the Squip’s face, and he has to take a moment before he can speak again. “Twice. The first time, in Copenhagen, when I killed your handler. I was supposed to kill you. And then in New York. I was supposed to kill you and Chloe Valentine. I could only kill her.”

Jeremy takes in a shuddering breath, wrenching his eyes away from the hidden gaze of his counterpart. He stares at the people, shuffling or running or biking through the streets of Guayaquil, living their own lives. He wishes he could switch, wishes he could trade places, go back and time and fix where it all went wrong. He wouldn’t have accepted the Squip’s offer. He would’ve gone to a goddamn therapist or experimented with drugs, like a normal person. He wouldn’t have gone and sold his soul to the Squip in exchange for a promise that he could make his life something  _different._

“Her husband’s father wanted her money. He got in contact with my director, and. And he had me kill her.” Jeremy snorted, but there was no humor to it. “Said it was for the greater good. Jake Dillinger’s a widower now but. He’ll probably get elected because of it. And his dad will get the money in Chloe Valentine’s will. I killed America’s Sweetheart for the goddamn  _pity vote.”_

Michael leans back in his chair. “You never miss.”

“No,” Jeremy acknowledges, and doesn’t say anything else.

The waitress comes with his coffee, something sweet and beige from all the milk. Jeremy can smell the vanilla, and Michael takes a lick of the foam from the stirrer before he says,  _“Gracias, muñeca.”_

The waitress gives a lighthearted laugh and responds,  _“De nada.”_

“Why Ecuador?” Jeremy asks after she’s long since disappeared between the tables of other diners. “I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.”

“Tagalog, too. From my mom.” Michael takes a careful sip, blowing on the still-steaming liquid before he drinks. “She died when I was fifteen. Killed.”

“Jesus, Michael.”

“Not, uh. By one of us. But. Cancer.” He takes another a sip of his coffee. “I got really into weed after that. It made everything feel a little-  _less._ ” He set the mug on the table, let his hands fall in his lap. “But you know, I did some of the harder stuff. I liked going too far sometimes. It made me feel closer to her, or something. Like if I got close enough to death I could just. Bring her back.”

Jeremy couldn’t understand wanting to feel less. He’s only ever wanted to feel  _more._ “Did it help?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Michael rubbed his eyes again, lifting the shades for the first time. The purple bruise was really a black eye that had swollen his left socket, while the right had bags underneath that were the same color as the awful mark on his other eye. “What do you want me to say? I spent all the time when my mom was sick trying to convince myself that soon, there would be a way to help. And when she died, I guess. I don’t know. I convinced myself that it was better to try and go with her instead of moving on.”

His voice cracks when he tries to speak again. “I stopped because I didn’t  _want_ to die. I wanted to control it. I wanted to have power over this stupid thing. I wanted to be in charge of it.”  He laughs, but it sends shivers up Jeremy’s arms. “I wanted to make Death my bitch. And so- I, uh. Got my first job. And by the time I realized that killing other people doesn’t actually _do_  that, I didn’t want to stop.”

Jeremy’s breath catches in his throat, and it sounds more forced than he’d meant it to when he tells him, “The one time I tried to quit, the Squip made  _me_ the mark, so I can’t. But I don’t-”  _I don’t think I can do this anymore,_ he thinks, but says, “He told me to kill you. He’s pissed I keep letting you go. I think he’s gonna try and kill me if I don’t do it eventually.”

Michael looks at him for a long time. When he opens his mouth he says, “Would you give it up? If you could?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremy laughs, and it’s a desperate, choking sound that bubbles up from his throat.

It’s contagious, and once they’re both laughing neither of them can stop.

**-o-**

 

He gets coffee with Christine.

It’s a nice place, tiny and hidden on the riverbank. Jeremy overpays for a latte. Christine teaches him the art of a perfect iced coffee.

She talks for most of the time again, twisting her straw thoughtfully in her coffee cup as she mentions politics, religion, belief systems. She talks about her crazy neighbors, the coworker who talked her into clubbing on a Wednesday, visiting her parents at home.

Jeremy wants. He can’t have, but God, he wants.

“What do you do?” She asks him, looking at him with piercing eyes. She’s kind, but she’s smart too, and Jeremy knows better than to try and lie.

He can’t tell her the truth, of course, but he settles for, “I’m, uh. Thinking of finding a new job.”

“What’s stopping you?”

He considers this. “I’m pretty tied down to the one I have.”

Christine takes a sip on her straw, looking him up and down. “Well, then untie yourself.”

“It’s not that easy,” he tries. The Squip wouldn’t let him leave. Even after getting fired, Jeremy knew he was still an investment. The Squip owned him. He’d given him this life, and it was no longer Jeremy’s to live. He runs his tongue over his bottom lip and still tastes the blood from when he’d forgotten. “It’s more of a knot. The kind gets stronger when you pull at it.”

“Jeremy,” Christine says, very carefully. “If you’re just getting more stuck, try pulling a different way.”

**-o-**

 

The Squip put an open offer on Jeremy’s dad. His control over him became all-consuming.

Jeremy, broken and exhausted, had come limping back. 

**-o-**

 

The moon is over Dubai when Jeremy says, “I love you.”

Michael considers this, then says only, “Who do you work for”

“I can’t,” Jeremy says, because Michael already  _knows,_ and his voice cracks. It’s all the answer Michael needs.

“I can’t be yours,” Michael says, and turns to face the sun. “You’re already his.”

“Please,” Jeremy begs, but doesn’t know what for.

**-o-**

 

He can’t have forever. Forever is meaningless, Jeremy knows, life is only worth whatever somebody pays to have you killed. His parents promised forever and then his mom left. The Squip had promised the rush would save him forever, until that went away too, leaving him with a debt he could never fulfill.

But  _God,_ does he want forever with Michael. He wants to wake up with him and not worry about when the Squip would send for him again. He wants a guinea pig in Manhattan, wants a commute to Hoboken to teach. He doesn’t want to live knowing that the Squip had eyes on him wherever he went, that it was only a matter of time before he sent the hounds to bring back the prize.

He wants control. He wants his life back. He wants the ability to pick and choose what he did with his days. He wants to pick and choose to be with Michael, wants an apartment in a suburb and a cat and friends to go to Halloween parties with.

But he’s taken too many lives to go back. He’s taken so much from so many that he can’t take any for himself.

He didn’t know he wanted normal until he’d already given it up.

**-o-**

 

The Squip crowns himself with Jeremy’s autonomy and replaces the gap it leaves behind with promises and persuasions.

It is always too late to leave.

**-o-**

 

He meets Rich at home. He’s the only one who knows what this is like.

“How did you quit?” Jeremy asks, as if they’re talking about smoking or dessert. His voice is hardly more than a whisper, as if the Squip would hear him if he spoke too loudly, and he doesn’t look Rich in the eyes.

Rich pours him a drink, and Jeremy remembers that Rich is free. He got out. He’d gotten everything Jeremy had given up when the Squip had taken his sovereignty and replaced it with a handgun and a headrush.

“I didn’t quit,” Rich tells him. “He found you, instead. Made you God and shoved me down to hell.”

“Always knew you were Satan,” Jeremy jokes half-heartedly, and wonders who would go to hell: The Squip, for turning him into who he has become; or himself, for selling his soul at all.

**-o-**

It is always too late to leave.

**-o-**

“What can I give you,” Michael asks in Copenhagen, working him open and flaying him apart with his fingers and his mouth and his words. “Jeremy, what- what do you want?”

And Jeremy’s breath just hitches and he scrapes his nails hard down Michael’s back and he wants forever he wants this and he can’t answer but Michael figures it out anyway, sinks into him like he’s coming home, and Jeremy thinks maybe if he scratches hard enough, maybe if he cries out loud enough, maybe if he pushes a little bit harder, then maybe he’ll get to stay.

**-o-**

It is always too late to leave.

**-o-**

 

The Squip puts out an open offer for Michael’s head. It’s his final revenge over Jeremy. If Jeremy couldn’t do it himself, he would find someone who would. It’s business as usual.

“Jeremy,” Michael asks, pushing him down onto the bed and crawling over him, and he is  _so alive_. They’re in a hotel room. Jeremy can’t remember where. “What do you  _need_?”

“You _know_ ,” Jeremy says, because everything is too hot and too much and too new and he just  _needs_ , and he knows that Michael understands.

Michael fucks him rough and hard, as if he’ll be able to fix the ugly thing inside of him, as if he’ll be able to soften the new truth that has settled alongside it. He knows what he needs to do.  

Jeremy was never the best. He was never anything but whatever other people made him. He had aimed for freedom and ended up with the Squip stuck inside his brain, ghosting behind his every move.

He’s done surviving between the crosshairs.

**-o-**

He wants to leave.

**-o-**

 

Michael calls him when Jeremy is hiding in a random hostel a few blocks away from the airport.

“Someone tried to kill me in Vienna,” he says. “They’re dead now. Apparently your boss put a mark on me. Who’d’ve thunk?”

“He’s not my boss anymore,” Jeremy tells him.

Michael takes a long moment. “Would you give this up? If you could.”

Jeremy remembers Ecuador. “It's not my choice to make.”

“If I gave you the choice,” Michael says, and Jeremy stops.

He remembers  _before,_ remembers finding the Squip, remembers his resurrection. Remembers the Squip’s coronation and his rule over a life Jeremy no longer has a stake in.

He wants the crown back.

“Yes,” he says, and falls from grace.

**-o-**

The sun is setting in Newark. Jeremy catches a flash of brown eyes in the sunlight, and he  _knows._   

 **-o-**  

The sun is rising in Manila when Michael aims at the Squip, and Michael never misses.

**-o-**

 

Jeremy is halfway across the world when Michael tells Jeremy that he doesn’t belong to anybody but himself.

“It's up to you now,” Michael says, quietly, and Jeremy lets the statement settle in his bones.

He hadn’t missed when he shot. This was Jeremy giving it up, if he could. The Squip is dead, but Jeremy isn’t sure he’ll ever be free. This is who the Squip has made him. But it’s no longer what he has to be.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Jeremy admits after a long moment. “I never thought I’d get this far. I don’t know what to do now that I’m here.”

“What about lunch?” Michael asks, and it’s his reply to his confession in Dubai. “Just the two of us?”

There’s a pause, but it isn’t heavy. Jeremy lets his thoughts fill the silence. For the first time in a long time, he only has to listen to his own.

**-o-**

 

He’s been doing this so long he doesn’t know how to stop. But at least now, he gets to make the choice.

**Author's Note:**

> engagement sequence (n): a standard series of steps a sniper takes from the instant he detects a target until he fires. this is practiced to ensure the sniper has taken into account range and wind and prepared himself for likely 1-shot kill.
> 
> (i am on [tumblr](http://danisnotofire.tumblr.com). comments are always read and always appreciated!)


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